Corkscrew’s Thing

The title of this could easily have been “HOW TO SCARE YOUR FRIENDS AT THE FLYING FIELD”. I chose the shorter of the possible titles.

It all started when I gave a good friend Gel Guerrero an old glider - a Windsoar 2.8 meter sailplane. Being a RC helicopter enthusiast, he had no idea how to fly these things. Accompanying the gift was a promise to teach him how to fly it.

Gel took the plane home and quickly brought it to top shape. Within a week, the Windsoar looked brand new. She now sported “interestingly faggish” colors. What was once a solid dark orange plane, was now orange, yellow, blue, green and red. Thereafter, friends and I dubbed the sailplane’s new owner “Mr Benetton”.

On our next visit to WFC Taytay, we had the good fortune of meeting our Club’s officers Jun Campos & Doc Glen Bulmer. It was the first time we met these gentlemen, who kindly welcomed us to the club. We also had a very good attendance of flyers that day. Lots of witnesses.

Gel was eager to give his Windsoar a try, so he carefully set it up. In a few minutes, he advised me that he was ready to go. I gave him a short briefing of the do’s & dont’s of glider flying… then we gave the glider’s powerpod-mounted .10 OS engine a start. In a moment, the engine was running. I had the transmitter in my hands, and Gel did the run & toss.

Soon enough, she was airborne and climbing at a gentle angle. After reaching a very good altitude, I brought the engine down to low idle & passed the controls to Gel. He looked like he was in an odd state of both wonder & nervousness. Moments later, he proved me right - sweating profusedly, he voiced out his desire to pass the radio back to me. But I insisted that he retain control and learn how to fly his own plane. There was nothing to fear, the Windsoar was at least ten mistakes high.

After fifteen minutes of roaming the skies, Gel complained of a stiff neck. To that, I only grinned. Its part of it afterall. Then he complained of sluggish controls. To that - I asked him to check if the engine was still running by pushing full throttle . The glider did not build-up any speed. I smiled to myself. Finally. A dead stick. Here’s where the real fun begins!

I watched Gel struggle with the plane for a while. When I saw the Windsoar had lost considerable altitude, I asked for the transmitter & took control. I noted that she was far from the flying field and very much downwind. Not good. There was a big decision to be made… do I risk it and go thermal hunting? There are duration records to be broken. Or do I bring her back to the safety of the flying field… and in so doing, end the flight?

I chose to be conservative. I pointed the plane back towards us, and pushed down elevator. The Windsoar slowly lost altitude, but started moving towards the safety of the flying field. I heard multiple gasps behind me. The older flyers knew there were thermals about, and were itching to go for it. I heard other voices, saying “Its so easy to fly longer than that. Why is he diving the plane?” More importantly, I heard someone say… “I thought you said this guy was a “glider king”? Why is he flying that way?”

Something inside me snapped.

From conservative glider pilot… I turned Gung Ho. I said to myself “It may have been three years ago when I last held on to a glider, but doggone it… I’m good at this”. A quick flight plan came into mind. And as quickly as I had thought of it, my fingers were putting it into action.

The Windsoar turned far towards the right side of the flying field. And I dove her even further to gain more speed. More sighs from behind me. But it didn’t matter. I was Gung Ho.

The glider was now less than a hundred feet in elevation, and roughly three blocks away from me. So I started my landing approach. There was a largish patch of tall cogon grass in front of me. I used it like a gun’s sights. I was aiming…

I was so absorbed in what I was doing that I failed to realize that nearly everyone present was watching. More importantly, that some flyers were dangerously close to me - standing only a few feet behind me on the runway. Only sir Jun & Doc Bulmer stood a good distance away, watching intently.

The Windsoar was now 500 feet in front of me, I kept her in a shallow dive. She was descending fast, and approaching even faster. When the sailplane was ten feet above the grass, I levelled her off. This caused the sailplane to lose much of its speed.

200 feet ahead, I dove the Windsoar a bit - bringing her closer to the ground and causing her to gain some speed. When the plane was only about 60 feet away - she vanished from sight behind the cogon grass.

This was the critical moment.

Fellow flyers thought that I was aiming for the patch of tall grass. They were sorely wrong. I was Gung Ho. If I might add - quite foolish too. In my eagerness… I failed to state my intentions to everyone around me. I think I thought they all had ESP.

What I had done that day, was in fact - almost a perfect text book maneuver: dive the glider a bit to give it speed. While it has good velocity - it hardly loses any altitude. Then you level it off close to the ground and fly the sailplane until it loses most of its inertia. Once the inertia is low, and the glider gets close to you… you pull full up elevator. This, so that the airplanes rises up, stalls… and gravity takes over. The trick is to catch the glider just as it is weightless. Now, does that sound easy to you? There is a lot of skill involved. The timing has to be right. Your ability to gauge distance, windspeed and the glide ratio of your aircraft needs to be very sharp. In the past, I’ve personally wrecked more than a few wings trying to get this one maneuver down.

In the words of one of the best glider pilots I know, commenting on the events that happened here: “That is the standard method. What is unusual is that the glider vanished from view”.

Back to the critical moment…

Just as the Windsoar disappeared behind the cogon grass, everyone around me relaxed. Then suddenly, the Windsoar rose up like a thundering Phoenix.

“Whoosh!”

Her three meter wings cast a vast shadow upon everyone… including me.

While I may have done this maneuver many times before, I’d forgotten that it had been three years since I’d last flown a glider or even attempted a hand-catch. In fact, as an afterthought - I realized that I’d only caught this particular plane once before (and that I vowed never to try it again).

So there she was - a giant looming nearly overhead… I don’t recall the precise inputs I made, but I did manage to stall her… a tad bit too high. Just as she stalled I brought her nose down, and she flew not too gently into my hand. I missed the fuselage by about six inches and managed to grab the wing. I was used to catching 2 meter gliders, which weighed considerably less. The Windsoar was easily double the weight of any of them. The force that hit my hand was so powerful, I could hardly contain it. I purposefully spun the plane to make it lose momentum. And that, she did with the tail whipping about until it finally hit the ground. There was some damage to the rudder, and a slight indentation on the wing’s leading edge where I had caught it. But otherwise, she was whole.

I heaved a heavy sigh of relief. I was so happy that I didn’t hit anybody. That of course, made me wonder. What happened to Mr Benetton? What about all of the flyers whose voices I had heard were so close behind me?

Back to the critical moment… as soon as the Windsoar suddenly appeared from behind the cogon grass, everyone ran like a bunch of frantic bunny rabbits.

To this day, guys at WFC Taytay joke about who ran first and who ran into whom. There’s also the story about who couldn’t run. The different versions of this as experienced by those who were there can be quite funny - if not hysterical. But… I chose not to write of it in that manner. Rather, I chose to write truthfully & honestly - to remind fellow flyers & perhaps teach beginners who read this - to remain conservative in your choices & bear in mind that safety comes first.

The lessons of this misadventure were deeply ingrained in me. The hand that I used to catch the Windsoar ached for nearly three months. An X-Ray revealed a microfracture. Pain is the price for being Gung Ho.